The most frightening career statistic we could ever imagine is, helpfully, unavailable. If we could ever know how many PowerPoint slides we have sat through over our careers, it would be beyond scary. I am sure there’s a whizzy tool to estimate it and I am equally sure it will understate it.
I think this whole topic is fascinating. Why do we all take so much comfort in communicating long and surrounding our messages with all the multimedia paraphernalia? Why do we feel the need to entertain a Board or go into unlimited detail? Yet, at the same time, any organizations I have seen try to work off one-pagers or pre-read only have very uninformed and superficial discussion with many not participating as they didn’t prepare.
I should now try to get your attention back as you are no doubt smiling and reminiscing about your most absurd PowerPoint experience. Were you the protagonist or the victim? Focus.
The trick in any discussion of a business plan is to get as quickly as possible to the very few things that really matter. Understand them clearly, in an external and internal context. Explore both their potential and the current reality. The strategy will pivot off this. This is why the best Founders talk endlessly about their product and perfecting it, because in the growth phase it is the needle mover. It’s the point, and the point of difference. In more mature businesses there can be a lot of secondary activity and variables. More effort is needed to peel back the onion and find the new core ideas, then to test whether they are ready to meet the desired ambition. There can also be a leaky bucket of older franchises declining and undermining progress on new work, churning results despite lots of effort.
In many cases the needle mover won’t exist. That is because many businesses lack a strategy and survive on stringing tactical actions together hoping it adds up to the ambition. This can become a multiyear habit and will be well rewarded for the year or two the hustle works. Whether you are a new leader, investor or Board member look hard for the big initiatives or absence of them. If you don’t have them recognize it. Say it out loud. Build a short-term defense plan that buys you the time to address the problem. Then put all your collective energy into a real intervention with your brightest and best to design the needle mover. In nearly 30 years in CPG I haven’t seen a category exhausted of ideas or consumer needs fully met. Much more common is effort diluted, and opportunity wasted.
So put yourself in one or other camp. Either we have the needle mover and that’s all we want to talk about. In detail. How we will realize the full potential decisively? What do we need? Or, we don’t have it, and that’s ok. It’s our untapped opportunity. Let’s get to work together finding it, developing it and fueling it. Let’s all get to the point!